Films this week 9/08 to 9/10/2023
by Gary Palmucci | 7th September 2023 | Gary's Corner
As we move inexorably toward the 25th anniversary of the events of September 11, 2001, many Americans are also mindful of another fateful day in modern world history: the violent overthrow on 9/11/1973 of the government of Chile and its president, Salvador Allende.
To mark next week’s 50th anniversary of the tragedy, New Plaza Cinema will showcase four diverse films that examine from various angles both the events themselves and their ongoing, mournful reverberations.
Costa-Gavras’ Missing, nominated for 4 Oscars including 1982’s Best Picture, has — in its chronicle of a young American’s fate in the wake of the bloody Chilean military coup — lost none of its power to shock and outrage. In his original NY Times review, Vincent Canby wrote,
“Costa-Gavras’ most beautifully achieved political melodrama to date, acted with immense authority by Jack Lemmon, as Charles Horman’s father Ed, and Sissy Spacek as Charles’ wife ….the screenplay is a model of its kind, in which Ed and his daughter-in-law’s search for Charles is developed in a series of scenes that seamlessly join past and present actions into a nonstop, forward-moving narrative.”
After both Saturday and Sunday afternoon’s screenings we’ll be joined by a very special guest — Joyce Horman, widow of Charles Horman, whose disappearance sets in motion the tragic events in Missing. Joyce has been engaged in a decades-long quest for justice for her husband’s death.
Another cinematically and politically astute filmmaker, Chilean Pablo Lorrain, has made several films about the Allende tragedy and its scars left on the national psyche. His 2012 drama No was celebrated in Cannes and a Critic’s PIck from the Time’s Manohla Dargis:
“Weirdly funny and rousing, both intellectually and emotionally, No revisits the remarkable moment in 1988 when General Pinochet was forced out by the No campaign, a center-left coalition that packaged resistance into commercials featuring jingles, a rainbow graphic and wide smiles, the nightmare legacy of the coup d’etat vanquished by a brilliant coup de theatre…Gael Garcia Bernal, in a deft, subtly moving performance, plays Rene, a skateboard-riding advertising hotshot who signs on to the No campaign, to the displeasure of his conservative boss…”
This is a film truly worthy of rediscovery. In this mini-series we’ll also feature our ongoing run of the Sundance prize-winning doc The Eternal Memory and a reprise of the tense drama Chile ’76, with its beautiful performance by Aline Kuppenheim, which we premiered last spring.
Also on yet another packed weekend program, holdover shows of The Miracle Club, Hester Street, Past Lives, Theatre Camp, Make Me Famous (with filmmaker Q&A. of course) and Our Father, the Devil.
Coming on the weekend of September 22, Michael Roemer’s The Plot Against Harry. And, some breaking news…starting October 6, a special engagement (direct from its NY Film Festival premiere) of Pedro Almodovar’s new film Strange Way of Life, starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal.
Gary Palmucci, Film Curator
New Plaza Cinema